


No Lights

by Flux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Stranger Things Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 02:36:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flux/pseuds/Flux
Summary: It's been one week since the unexpected black out that smashed the carefully cultivated routine of the Zeppelin to smithereens. Dean's not out to fix it all. There's just one little thing he needs to take care of.





	No Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> For Arronaut. Hope you like it! 
> 
> Mrrr Crismas and a Happy New Year!

The ship wasn't always this creepy at night. Back when he was a little kid, the lights stayed a cool blue-white all hours of the day. But then they went legitimate and standardized all sorts of programming and the Human Maintenance Protocol indicated that the optimal circadian rhythm was maintained by a rotation of red, yellow, blue, and white lights. So here's Dean creeping down the silent corridors looking like he's been bathed in fruit punch. Or like a giant cherry lollipop melted all over him. Even his eyeballs.

When he'd done this, back when he was a little kid, there'd never been the feeling of foreboding that he feels now. Back then, his mother would sneak up behind him, surprising him with tickles all up his sides and she'd carry him, still laughing, back to his berth. Now though, his hands grow clammy just thinking what Captain Singer might do to him.

He reaches the cargo bay via the designated night areas without running into anyone. Not surprising. The bay is stacked full with parts and supplies from the seventh octant of the galaxy. It's impossible to make his way through without practicing some of his climbing skills. Even so, he knows there is one part of the bay that stays empty.

Unless there's an emergency. In the last few weeks there've been a lot of emergencies.

The hidden door slides open without a sound. Fairy lights blink on, outining the edge of each step in the inky darkness. The Human Maintenance Protocol never quite made its way into this tiny corner of the ship. Dean hurries down the spiraled steps, stopping before the final turn.

"Cas?" he calls. "You decent?"

There's just enough pause to make his heart beat faster before a rough voice answers.

"Yes?"

Dean closes his eyes and feels for the lights. The fairy lights race up the railing and across the walls, growing until the pin-picks are the sizes of canteen trays, illuminating the space behond his eyelids. Slowly, he sticks his head around the corner and peels open one eye.

"Argh! Cas!" He plasters himself back against the side of the stairs and fights down the urge to puke. "You call that decent?"

There's another long pause.

"Sorry."

Dean counts to ten, slowly, before he dares another peek. This time Cas looks like a boy. A human boy. That is, except for the eyes. Dean represses the urge to gulp as he steps off the stairs and into the awkward space of the compartment. It is low, but wide, filled with false seats and empty shelves that were once full of blackbox goods and padlocked cases. He remembers, once, they'd smuggled a cow down here.

Cas looks happy to see him, and Dean tries not to feel a little insulted when those cosmicly blue eyes light up when he slips the backpack off his shoulder. Recently, he'd discovered that while Cas will eat anything Dean brings him, he has a certain predilection for PB&Js. There's something like the ocular equivalent of grabby hands when he pulls the stack of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches out from the largest pouch. He doesn't make Cas wait to hand them over.

"Thank you Dean," Cas says, deep and sincere, like Dean has made his life ten times better just by bringing shitty sandwiches to his equivalent of a damp, mildewy basement room. The compartment isn't damp or mildewy, but it is kind of cold and there's no flat floor so it always kind of feel like you're climbing uphill no matter which way you go.

"Are you tired?" he blurts out. When Cas just gives him a confused tilt of the head, he follows up with, "I mean, how are you sleeping?"

"Sleeping?" Cas squints at him like if he looks hard enough he can read Dean's mind and figure out what the hell sleeping is. Dean is ninety percent sure that Cas can not, in fact, read his mind. Ten percent of Dean is hastily thinking about fluffy sheep jumping over fences.

"You know, when you close your eyes and lie down and don't think of anything and you open your eyes later and a lot of time has passed even though you don't remember anything."

Cas abruptly stands up, rage shaking his skinny limbs inside of the oversized trenchcoat that Dean has made him put on and never could get him to take off again.

"No! No one makes me sleep!"

"Whoa Cas!" Dean puts his hands up like he's gentling a horse. "No one is making you sleep. It's just something you do when you want to. And it can be, uh, it can be good. Restful. Gives you energy."

Cas' shoulder slump and he crumples into a little curled up ball, arms around his legs, nose buried between his skinny knees.

When Dean first met Cas, he was pretty sure he was an alien. He'd never met one before, just heard of them, half-myth, half-real beings that people claimed existed somewhere in the dark, deep trenches of space. But then there were times when Cas just seemed like another kid who was a little lost.

Dean ducks and half shuffle-squats, half crawls under the lip of the upper deck and wedges himself into the edge of the compartment next to Cas. He doesn't touch him.

After a few minutes, Cas says fiercely, "You won't make me sleep."

"No," Dean affirms. "Never."

"Because we are... friends." The word rolls awkwardly off Cas' tongue, but Dean beams at the usage.

"Yeah! You remembered."

Cas answers him with a small smile, something out that Dean has the uncomfortable feeling is also something new that he's just learning.

Later, when Cas has uncontorted himself from the corner and has helped Dean do the same with some very painful tugging, they sit side by side on the lid of Cas' pod eating sandwiches. Cas is trying to lick an uncooperative lump of jam from between his fingers when Dean wipes his hand of crumbs and turns back to his backpack. He pulls the photo and the little e-pad from the front pocket and waits for Cas to turn his attention to him before flipping them over.

"I, um, I brought these. For you to look at."

Cas sets the last gooey corner of his sandwich down with careful reverence before reaching for the items that Dean promptly jerks out of the way.

"No! Wash your hands. Geez. It's like you were raised by wolves."

Cas frowns at him, pursing his lips before declaring imperiously, "No. Not wolves." Dean isn't fast enough from stopping Cas from wiping his hands on the back of his coat. He's going to have to separate those two if it kills him. There aren't any rats in space, but he's sure that coat will manage to attract some sort of vermin.

Hands now only ninety percent dirty, Cas rummages through his pockets and pulls out the Everclean washcloth and wipes his fingers down one by one. With a self-satisfied smile, he looks back up at Dean, who can only hand over the photo with an eyeroll.

He waits, heart in his throat, as Cas bores his eyes into the picture. Dean knows it by heart. It was taken a year ago. Documentation, Bobby had called it, of the crew. The crew. What was a mop-haired ten-year-old doing on the crew? What it really meant was that Dean had a half-full little booklet whose pages depicted his brother's growth, year-by-year. Sam was going to msis this year's photo shoot.

"This is Sam," Cas states.

"Yeah. Does it, uh, does it help? Does it help you find him?"

When Cas just keeps glaring at the picture, Dean can't help the panic building inside.

"Come on, Cas. Please tell me you can do something. Anything."

Suddenly, the air erupts with a long rip of static, speakers roaring to life with a vengeance. And through the cacophony of metallic groans and ear-rending shrieks, a voice. It's a voice as familiar to Dean as his own. He doesn't remember a time without it by his side. And he doesn't remember a time when it sounded so scared.

"Help please." It's little more than a whisper, a prayer with no hope of being heard. "I just need someone to help me get home."

"Sam!" Dean shouts, on his feet and reaching up towards the speaker. "It's going to be okay! I'm going to find you! I'm going to bring you home!"

The speaker crackles with odd bursts of static.

"Please," Sam's voice murmurs, distorted and almost unrecognizable as the sound wavers. Loud, quiet, high, and low. "Anyone."

"Sam!"

Just as quickly as it began, the sound cuts out, leaving in its wake a foreboding silence. Dean whirls around.

"Cas! You gotta get him ba- SHIT!"

Dean jumps over the old rails and hauls Cas off the ground. The other boy is heavier than he looks, and it takes almost all of Dean's strength to push and pull and roll him onto his back on the bench. Not again. Dean doesn't know where to put his hands, so he ends up doing a little bits of nothing, hands quivering uselessly over the other boy.

He has to pull it together and think. He knows what to do in an emergency. Every time Sam fell or tripped or ran into a wall, he was there with steady hands and an assessing eye. His hands find their way under the other boy's chin. Cas' pulse jitters wildly against his fingers, but it's strong and slowing down with every beat. His skin is pale and waxy and a thin line of blood runs down from the corner of each eye, but his chest still rises and falls with steady reassurance. Dean isn't sure that Cas really needs to breathe, but he is and that has to be a good thing.

The short strands of hair are stuck to Cas' forehead with cold sweat when Dean wipes them away. He grabs the Everclean from where Cas dropped it after wiping his hands and he dabs up the dark red trickle running down each cheek. There's more than last time. If it was anything else, he'd swear to himself he'd never ask Cas to do that again. Every time it gets worse and worse, which scares the jeezes out of Dean. 

If it was  _anything_ else.

"You did good," he says around the lump in his throat, hoping that Cas can somehow hear him. Hoping that his voice, his words, help in any small way. "You did real good."

He doesn't think about how he's going to ask Cas to do better next time.

**Author's Note:**

> A combination of the first two prompts:
> 
> 1: Stranger Things/Spn mashup, preferably with Cas filling the role as 11 and Dean as Mike. Just how much the au takes from either ‘verse is up to you
> 
> 2: space pirates au. Go wild


End file.
